Recursion Complex
by Doctor Supernova
Summary: Once a beloved hero and living legend, the Hunter has been turned into the Hunted by the people she tried to protect. When she abandons the Galactic Federation as a fugitive in search of asylum, she and her few remaining allies are drawn into a mysterious space station where chaos reigns and specters of the past hide.
1. Chapter 1: The Fallout

**Chapter 1: The Fallout**

Samus reached into her jacket pocket and felt around for her paralyzer gun. She rested her fingers on it as her feet hammered against the metallic floor and her eyes darted back and forth, watching for anyone to appear at the curve ahead in the winding hallway. Just the odd passerby, which would look at her for a moment and move on. Outside of her power suit, the most attention she got was a " _watch where you're goin', bud_ " when she sprinted past and nearly bowled someone over. No obvious threats there.

Energy surged under her skin all the same.

She had an acute awareness of everything around her: the shadows the moving figures cast against the harsh incandescent lights above, the beads of sweat rolling down her back and matting her hair, the floor panels reverberating under the drill of her footsteps, the stench of cleaning solution resting heavy at the back of her throat. Her grasp on the paralyzer tightened, pressing the shape of its handle into her palm. Every few seconds she tensed up, half-expecting a slimy, infected abomination to emerge from the doors. As far as her body was concerned, she never actually finished her last mission.

 _I should have been giving a routine report to the Council right now,_ she thought. But that was before she destroyed a research station – and an entire planet – in direct violation of Federation orders. And if her past few experiences with them served any indication, this wasn't the same Galactic Federation that she fought to defend as a teenager. Corruption loomed overhead, and it didn't forgive any breach of protocol, let alone one as heinous as vaporizing a planet.

There was a part of her that just wanted to leave this galaxy behind, but she knew she couldn't. Not as long as there were innocents that needed her, and especially not as long as she had living allies whose safety had been compromised by her act of defiance.

That's what brought her to this station. Janus Space Colony, a relatively small boarding-house orbiting a gas giant in the outer reaches of a sparsely populated solar system. It was where she and two other witnesses to one of the worst examples of Federation corruption chose to stay. Janus was only a little less cramped than the average satellite colony, but Samus had spent her whole life in tighter spaces, and the others reasoned it was a small price to pay to keep a safe distance from the leaders they'd testified against.

After what Samus did, even this isolated space wouldn't be safe anymore.

 _They were a lost cause the moment they met me._

Intrusive thoughts pooled at the back of her mind, weathering her focus like droplets of acid. She bit the bottom of her lip, remembering all of Adam's reassurances on the way to the colony. _As if that matters? He believed the Federation was just and he died for it, and so will they, soon. Just like Mom and Dad, and Grandpa Bird, and–_ She squeezed her eyes shut and gave a light smack to her head with her free hand, as if the miasma of thoughts could be knocked away like water out of her ear.

She opened her eyes again and saw the room number she'd been looking for, flickering neon blue over an automatic door. While nothing about it had ever signaled home for her, she felt her body ease at the sight of it. She let go of the paralyzer and knocked twice on the door. "Hello? Open up. It's Samus."

The door slid open to reveal a man in a sweaty tank top and gym shorts, his muscular figure barely fitting the doorframe. He popped off his headphones and gave an impossibly wide smile. "Princess! You're back already!" His expression dropped as soon as he got a look at Samus's face. "What happened? You tired? Mission not go too well?"

Samus pushed past him without a word and shut the door behind her. "There, now we can talk." She paused to scan the tight room. Nothing but two bunk beds, one with a rising and falling figure bundled up in the comforter, and a sofa stiff from disuse. Yet she swore she felt invisible eyes passing judgment from every crack in the wall panels. She took a deep breath. "Anthony… we all need to leave. Now."

"What?!" He chuckled nervously. "I guess it really didn't go well, then!"

"It's a long story," said Samus, reaching into a nearby closet, "but that corrupt branch of the Federation we witnessed on our Bottle Ship mission runs deeper than we thought. More importantly, they'll likely do anything to silence us now." She grabbed a bag from the closet and started shoving fistfuls of clothes and small rectangular ration packets inside. "I'm not sure where else we can go, but we're not going to be safe here anymore."

Anthony crossed his arms. "But we can't let 'em keep you quiet! Once you tell everyone the truth, their days have gotta be numbered! Besides, I've seen you fight! You could take down anyone they send after you, easy!"

"Maybe I could, even if I am still getting used to some adjustments to my power suit… It's you two I'm worried about," said Samus. She stopped packing and took a moment to breathe in again, glancing to the mound of blankets and the tuft of red hair poking out of them, then back to Anthony. When she looked at him, she couldn't help but see that horrified expression on his face as he plummeted toward a sea of magma. It was an afterimage burned into her mind's eye that even his safe return couldn't wipe away. "If we stay here, your lives will be in constant danger. You almost died when I backed down before. I won't let it happen again."

His voice lowered. "What you did in the power plant wasn't backing down, Samus. You didn't expect to ever see Ridley again and your brain overwhelmed itself, there was nothing you could have done about that."

"What, have you been listening to my psychiatrist?" Samus smirked and gave his shoulder a light shove. "The point stands. I can't risk your safety."

Anthony nodded. "This is all pretty sudden. I'll miss little old Janus, but you haven't been wrong about danger before. I'll go wake up Madeline and tell her-"

"You should go. Without me."

Samus and Anthony froze. They turned around to see a redheaded woman standing by one of the bunk beds, her feet shaking under her weight and her grip on the support beams so tight that her knuckles were bright white. "Doc! I didn't know you were up," said Anthony.

Madeline stepped forward and looked up at them from behind a set of tangled bangs so overgrown that they almost masked her stare. "I've been awake for a while." From the dark circles the size of energy capsules under her drooping eyes, which were fighting back tears with little success, Samus had no reason to doubt her claim. Or that this was her first time standing up in a while, for that matter. "You're so strong, you can survive no matter what happens. I can't. Let them come for me and- and punish me for what I've done and maybe then they'll finally be satisfied and leave you alone!"

The room fell silent save for a faint hum from the vents.

Time crawled to a standstill as Samus met Madeline's gaze. This was someone who'd once been the epitome of Federation corruption, an entire rogue facility under her command. Every once in a while, especially in the time between her crawling into bed and falling unconscious, Samus caught her mind drifting back to what happened in that station, how she watched Adam die and almost lost Anthony.

Thinking about it now, the dull pain of an old wound welled up in Samus's chest. She blamed herself for it… but she couldn't bring herself to blame Madeline for it, too. "That won't be enough after my actions this past week. And we won't leave you behind." She placed her hand on Madeline's shoulder, the outline of a weak smile visible in the corners of her eyes. " _I_ won't leave you behind."

Madeline wiped the droplets from the rims of her eyelids. "I- I don't know what to say… Thank you, Samus. I'll try not to put you in harm's way. It's the least I can do after… after everything you've done for me."

"Trust me, Doc," said Anthony with a wink, "this is Samus Aran. It's nothing she hasn't done before."

* * *

Three bags slung over one of her arms barely slowed Samus's pace back down the hall. "I've thought about our plan of action on the way here. We need a place to hide while we figure out our next move, and I have two of my past mission locations in mind."

"Here, let me-" Anthony tried to reach for one of the bags, but Samus pulled her arm away. It was her fault that they had to leave in the first place, so she wanted to at least carry the luggage, much to his dismay. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't everywhere you go explode? You kind of have a reputation for that."

"Not everywhere." She rolled her eyes. It was easy to forget she was a living legend when she spent so little time around other people. "Take Tallon, the first planet I cleansed during the Phazon Crisis. It's uninhabited, but it has an oxygen-rich atmosphere and is now free of any hazardous materials. Or Aether. The denizens there consider me a hero, so they should grant us asylum without question, though I would prefer not to bring them into our personal problems unless we have no other choice."

Anthony thought for a moment. "I don't know, Samus. Everyone who knows anything about phazon knows about your role in clearing out those planets. They seem like the first place anyone would look for you."

"Damn it, you're right." Samus clenched her fist around one of the bag's handles. _Calm down_ , she thought, _getting frustrated will just make it worse._

She turned around and saw him without his usual grin and Madeline, who hadn't said a word since they left the room, staring blankly at the metal panels below. A glint in her hair caught Samus's eye – she was wearing a pink hairclip that wouldn't look out of place on a child, and it had noticeable cracks running across its smooth surface. _That's odd. Why is she…?_ Then she remembered. "Melissa's clip."

"Yes?" Madeline's hand went to the clip. Her fingertips barely brushed it, as though it would crumble away at the slightest touch.

Samus was startled to get a response. She'd said that out loud? "It looks good. On you," she said, smiling awkwardly.

To Samus's relief, Madeline raised her head and cracked a faint smile, probably for the first time in days. "Thank you." She looked back down.

"Hey, we can make it to the docking bay faster if we take this shortcut!" Anthony gestured to a nearby door, opening it to reveal a massive room. It was full of half-awake humanoids slouching over sofas, cleaning off exercise equipment, and packing their belongings away for the night.

"A recreational facility?" Samus looked over to him.

Anthony smiled. "You mean the rec center? Now come on, I've gotten to know this place pretty well."

Samus kept watching the corners as she and the others slowly made their way to the other side of the room. Nobody there seemed to give them much thought except for a pair of guards leaning against the wall next to the way out. One of them pulled out a tablet and pointed first to the screen, then to Samus. She forced herself not to visibly shudder. She never liked escorting such vulnerable targets through danger like this. Something about her attracted pain and death.

Meanwhile, Anthony waved to some of the humanoids by the exercise machines, and they waved back. "Hey, Higgs," one of them with a towel resting on their shoulders said, "where ya goin' this late?"

"Just got something to take care of!"

It amazed Samus how easily he brushed that question off without technically lying. She followed his lead to the door across the room, with Madeline walking so close in between them that it could almost be considered huddling. They were only one hallway away from her gunship, but Samus couldn't help but reach back into her coat pocket and ready her weapon again.

"Hey, Princess. Feeling a little on edge?"

Her hold on the paralyzer relaxed. "You could say that."

Anthony patted her on the back. "So am I, being perfectly honest here. But you always find a way out of everything, and besides, we're almost out."

Before Samus's brain registered what happened next, she felt a jolt at the back of her neck. She lunged forward and pushed Anthony and Madeline to the ground with each of her palms. Two energy shots grazed her shoulder, leaving trails of vermilion light that dissipated when they hit the wall with a harsh _crackle_. She looked back up and saw one of the two guards aiming a paralyzer at her.

"Samus Aran, we've just received a warrant for your arrest. Says you used a Federation-owned station to destroy planet SR388."

She staggered to her feet, rubbing the numb spot on her shoulder where the blasts made contact. The crowd preparing to leave the rec room, who'd gone dead quiet when the shots were fired, broke out into a low murmur. There was no way any of them didn't know who _the_ Samus Aran was.

"Stand down and don't move. We'll be taking you to the Supreme Council for your trial. And your accomplices, too." They looked her over and tilted their head. "Huh. So this is what you look like outside that power suit. Y'know, my associate here used to think you _were_ the suit." The other guard elbowed them.

Samus dropped her bags and kicked them towards Anthony and Madeline. She turned to them and whispered, " _run._ "

She materialized sheets of orange metal and yellow padding that wound around her limbs and torso to form her suit that deflected the incoming paralyzer shots. Neon green hexagonal panes expanded around her field of vision, creating a visor that immediately honed in on the guards.

"Stop–" The guard couldn't finish before nearly getting knocked off their feet by a burst from Samus's newly-manifested arm cannon. It could've done a lot more if she charged it longer, but she wasn't shooting to kill.

Samus maneuvered around the second guard, who was too terrified to try and stop her, and bolted through the crowd of onlookers to the door. She stepped out into the hallway, swerving to evade a flurry of incoming fire. Left, right, further right, left. The spikes on her suit's forearms burrowed into the wall when she veered too far, creating a shower of bright sparks. The walls whirled past so quickly that it seemed to melt into a tunnel of silver streaks illuminated red and white.

A shrill alarm echoed through the hall, building the cacophony of guards hollering and energy blasts hitting steel. When she took a quick look back, she saw that there were at least half a dozen officers giving chase, but by now their constant gunfire had deteriorated and their focus was on keeping pace with her. She moved so quickly that she caught up with her fellow escapees within seconds, and the entrance to the docking bay was in sight.

Anthony took out his freeze gun from one of the bags and aimed toward more guards that were emerging, shielding Madeline with his other arm. "What are we gonna do now?!"

Samus opened a communication line back to the gunship. "Adam, start the ship's engines! We're making an immediate takeoff!"

"You named your ship's computer after Commander Malkovich? Aww, Princess, that's so thoughtful!" Anthony swung the bags and knocked over an officer without looking away from her.

"He _is_ Commander Malkovich," said Samus.

Anthony blinked. "…I'm sorry, wha-"

"I said it's a long story!"

The ship's hatch shifted and lowered to the floor as they entered the dock. Samus jumped inside, with Anthony and Madeline following close behind, and entered the ship amidst the chaos of the guards taking one final chance to seize them. The ship was just like she'd left it, with seats at the ready and the dachoras and etecoons from her past missions curled up on the floor. She catapulted herself past the creatures on board into the pilot's seat.

A circular purple light mounted on the screen at the center of the dashboard came on, flickering in response to their entry. "Samus. Where do you wish to go?" It spoke in a tinny, synthetic voice, but with a quick yet deliberate cadence that reminded Samus of her time spent in the Federation Army. Adam.

"Away from here!" She powered on the thrusters without setting target coordinates, throwing the still-entering passengers off their feet and hurtling the gunship through the gaps between other parked ships. The few plasma shots that made contact with it did nothing to slow its departure from the docking bay.

Samus calmed her breathing to slow her pulse as the towering metal structures gave way to the endless, murky vistas of outer space. The pinpricks of starlight in the distance became lines drawn across the depths of the void, the gunship now moving at hyperspeed.

"Whoa boy," said Anthony as he grabbed onto an armrest and staggered into the seat, "talk about a rough takeoff! You okay, Doc?"

Madeline hyperventilated and clung to one of the passenger seats for dear life, with a nearby etecoon sniffing her and tugging at her shirt. She looked at Anthony and gave a shaky nod, her smile looking more like the bared teeth of a frightened animal.

"Hello, Anthony." Adam's artificial voice came from a set of speakers. "Samus told me about you."

Anthony stood up and slowly walked toward the dashboard. He tapped the light that watched him like an inquisitive eye. "So this is the commander?" His voice wavered. "You don't… you don't remember me?"

"It's complicated." Samus kept her hand on the gunship's steering globe and her eyes on the stars ahead. "He's a copy of Adam's brain patterns, collected sometime between our time together in the army and his final mission. His memories were compromised, but I've always heard bits of him through the canned orders, and he's coming to terms with that, too."

Adam's light flashed again. "I'm still learning about who I… or, rather, who I was based on… was. But it's truly an honor to meet you."

"Great to see you again too, Commander Malkovich. Or hear you?"

Samus silently sighed. There was a part of her that wanted this computer to be flesh and blood, to have the real Adam's voice, to _be_ the real Adam. But this was just a copy, and she couldn't deny it. "You should sit back down, Anthony. I don't want you to get hurt if we have to make a sudden stop."

Anthony nodded and slipped back into his chair. Next to him, the curious etecoon had crawled into Madeline's lap. She prodded at its back, smoothing over the fur and earning a contented squeak that she couldn't help but smile at.

Samus closed her eyes for a moment and all the doubts clawing at her mind faded a little. Surely there would be ships in pursuit before too long, and she still had to find a place to hide, but the gunship was well beyond Janus Space Colony.

She was, dare she even think it, safe. The etecoons and dachoras were safe. Anthony and Madeline were safe. Adam – if only a simulation of him – was safe.

Maybe, just this once, she wouldn't lose them.

Then all the streaks surrounding the ship collapsed back into points. Everything on board heaved forward, the seatbelts digging into Samus's shoulders as she almost crashed into the control panel.

Her pupils narrowed. Did the ship just stop? Why? She pulled up everything she could on the dashboard and checked the various meters and gauges. "That can't be right," she said. "Plenty of fuel, no breaches to the hull, nothing overheating… Why is the engine stalling?"

The panel housing Adam played a light _ping._ "Diagnostics complete. It appears that outside interference is preventing the ship from operating properly. I have no protocol on record for resolving this issue."

Samus shifted her focus to the small screen in front of her and pulled up their current location. There was nothing within a lightyear radius of the ship. She adjusted the rear cameras projected on the windshield, and that's when she saw a gargantuan space station looming behind them, composed of intricate, weathered metallic structures that crumbled apart into bits of shrapnel hanging motionless in the vacuum of space. Looking back down, she saw that there was still no indication of the presence of a station on the map. "That _has_ to be what's causing our engine problem."

Anthony looked over the towering station, mouth agape, while Madeline shivered and clung nervously to the etecoon. He stood back up. "This gunship of yours got any actual guns on it?"

"It used to. This standard-issue rush job they gave me doesn't." She opened a compartment next to the screen that revealed a set of switches. "If these emergency thrusters even work, they still won't be enough to take us anywhere. We could carry the ship into the station, but this is the most obvious trap I've seen in a long time. It isn't even shown on my radar."

"Unless we want to wait for the Feds to come pick us up or die here before they find us, we don't really have a choice," said Anthony.

Samus pulled the levers and felt the low hum of the backup thrusters reverberating through the ship. There was a small entrance carved into the side of the decaying station, with no light visible inside. It could bring shelter from the outside world or death from within.

 _So be it._


	2. Chapter 2: The Anomalous Station

The gunship lost its momentum as it drifted into the station's docking bay. In the camera views on either side of the windshield, a tunnel framed by gray columns and girders opened up onscreen, only faintly illuminated by the blue light from the front of the ship.

There had to be a landing pad somewhere. Samus kept the gunship coasting on what was left of the backup thrusters. The planet-strength gravity of the station kept the ship needing constant power to stay off the ground and moving.

Adam's dashboard light flashed. "This area doesn't appear as damaged as the outside. It's not guaranteed that there are living occupants, but it seems likely."

"Well, if anything _is_ here, they don't seem to mind a strange craft flying straight into their turf," said Anthony. He tried to recline in his chair, but he kept leaning forward again and adjusting himself to get a better look at the sprawling industrial maze surrounding them.

It looked like a poor imitation of a Federation colony, its tangled jumble of charcoal-colored pipes and support beams in full view rather than tucked away behind cleaner sheets of metal. Samus could only guess what built this place, but she had a feeling they wouldn't be much safer here than in Janus Colony. "Once we land, our best course of action is to search the area for any humanoids or other intelligent life forms. There's a chance that they may be unaware of the interference and help us." She spotted a platform barely large enough to land on and activated the ship's landing protocol. "There's also a chance that they may be fully aware and intend to kill us."

Anthony extended a thumbs-down gesture toward Samus, attracting a confused head tilt from Madeline. "So we'll deal with that as it comes?"

"As we always have." Samus returned with a nod and a thumbs-up as the ship came to a rest, the tips of its wings hitting the platform with a thud. She crawled out of her seat and stood over the ship's lower hatch. "Adam, outside status."

"There are no toxic or mutagenic substances of significant concentration. Air is composed of 22.03 percent oxygen and breathable. The outside temperature is slightly above the freezing point of water, which hopefully won't conflict with your metroid DNA anymore," said Adam.

Samus looked back at the ship's dashboard with a raised eyebrow. "I think can handle it, Adam." She pushed the ship's door downward, detaching it and letting the ship's warm air out into the cool chamber around them. Even through her now fogged-up visor, she could see a thick layer of grime on the floor below – from the sharp acidic smell, probably burnt fuel gel. "Let's go, Anthony. Be careful, we still don't know what we'll find here."

"Wait, what about Doc and the Commander? And these little things?" Anthony gestured to the birds and raccoon-like creatures pacing across the ship's floor.

"Adam will stay here and check in with us periodically. The dachoras and etecoons know this ship, so they won't need much supervision." But what to do about Madeline? If Samus took her along, there'd be no guarantee that she would be able to protect her against anything that attacked them. No, she'd have to stay here. "Madeline, stay inside. We'll give you status updates every now and then via a communication line between our suits and the ship. The ship's windshield is tinted from the outside, so nothing should see you, but try to stay out of view just in case."

Madeline fidgeted subtly, tracing the grooves on her palm with her fingertip before looking up at Samus. "Okay," she murmured.

Samus's eyes met Madeline's for a few seconds. "I'll do everything I can to keep you safe. I promise." She grabbed the sides of the hatch and lowered herself out of the ship.

Anthony followed, giving one last smile to those remaining on the ship. "And keep the place clean while we're gone, will ya? Don't let the fuzzballs get in our food!" And the hatch closed behind him.

Except for the strange animals and the electronic ghost of a man, Madeline was alone.

She went to sit down behind her seat, carefully obscuring herself from the view of the windshield with the seat's back. Her arms wrapped around her knees and pulled them close to her chest. All of this felt uncomfortably familiar to her. Was this going to be her life from now on, running and hiding behind others stronger than her? This was nothing but an accidental detour from a course that should have killed her. She almost would have preferred if Samus never saved her back then.

"Dr. Bergman?"

She peeked out from behind the seat without a sound.

"I've just received word from Samus on what we can do. We should try to restore engine function despite the interference. See if you can bypass the lock on the ship's thrusters." Adam unlocked several control panels scattered across the ship, powering the ship down save for the dashboard hosting him. "Also, I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind."

* * *

Samus followed a hallway out from the docking bay, the path lit by luminescent strips along the bottom of the walls. She and Anthony had decided to split up to cover the most ground in the least time. Her scan visor recorded all the information it could gather, but that only included small additions to her provisional map of the area and the fact that the light panels contained xenon.

So far, it wasn't the most interesting station she'd been to. Still, she kept herself prepared for anything. She made sure that she'd never see a Space Pirate again when she wiped them out their leadership on Zebes, but there were still all kinds of threats to the peace, and any of them could be hiding in here. And, if they were the ones that obscured the station from her ship's radar and emitted a ship-stopping signal, they must have been a cut above the Space Pirates' research divisions.

 _Maybe I could stop wasting time and go right after them, save more people,_ she thought, _if I weren't weighed down by the others. This is pointless, they're going to die anyway. They always do-_

Samus clenched her fists. _No. Not if I have a say in it._

Finally, an automatic door came up on her right, but it didn't budge when she approached it. She armed her cannon with a super missile and readied herself before unleashing it, blowing the door off of its track and revealing a decrepit laboratory on the other side.

She tapped a light switch to the side of the doorframe. A sudden crackling noise made her flinch for a second. There was a low buzz and a few sparks from the exposed wires lying about, but no lights came on. From the illumination of her visor, she could see that there was a thin film of dust covering the floor that kicked up with every step she took. Whoever originally used this facility must have left a long time ago.

Samus stopped in front of one of the lab tables. There were a few organic matter samples kept in small cylinders strewn across the tabletop. Her scanner honed in on each of them.

 _Logbook matches successful: Jelzap brain gray matter, Hopper exoskeleton, Petrasyl tendrils. Four more unidentified substances._

One of the tubes contained the largest sample of intact jelzap core tissue she'd ever seen. She picked it up and looked at the globule, gently waving the container to swirl the fluid inside. How many planets' species were brought here and then left behind? Unless she could find some more basic information about this place, perhaps she'd never know.

She set the tube down and went over to what looked like an operating table. Scraps of gauze littered the floor surrounding it. It clearly hadn't been sterilized after its last use, its surface slick with some dark coagulated substance that her visor couldn't identify. From the scratches running along the edge and torn straps hanging off the side, something put up a fight on that table.

Samus felt her breathing slow as she went to the other side of the table to look over a set of glass cases holding all kinds of boxes and bottles. There was a stillness to the air and it didn't quite smell right, like the room was a stagnant pool collecting filth that she couldn't see but knew was there. This was the kind of place that drove her mad as a teenager during her days in the Federation Police and even more so in the army. Now, it was just a relief there was nothing trying to cut her throat.

Then a tingle at the back of her neck jolted her back into the present.

 _CRAAAAASH!_

Two long, scythe-like appendages shot out and scraped against her shoulder pads as she pulled herself away and ducked behind the table.

Looming over her was a tall insectoid creature with green liquid dripping from its fanged mouth, compound eyes the size of her helmet with a metallic sheen, and shards of glass rolling off its pitch black carapace. It hobbled from one foot to the other, its balance thrown off by its lunge at Samus.

She didn't recognize it, and scanning it didn't give her any answers. But it just attacked her without reason or warning, so she planned to respond in kind.

In a moment of inspiration, Samus charged at it. She slid under a slash of its spiked forelegs and swept the floor under its feet with a kick, toppling it over. But that accidentally made it fall on her leg, pinning her down. As it tried to claw open her suit, she shoved her arm cannon where its arm met its shoulder socket. She charged the cannon and fired a super missile that blasted part of its exoskeleton off.

Smooth black shards blew out from the solid piece that launched into the glass cases. The creature screeched and released its grip on Samus, bright purple blood oozing from its now-exposed tissue. With the smooth shell removed, its pulsating collage of mismatched flesh was revealed. A patch of small black bumps, another piece like a hunk of human flesh dipped in purple dye, all loosely held together by tendons and fat that struggled to contract with every movement.

 _That must be why it can barely walk,_ Samus thought.

A purple droplet hit a frayed wire on the floor and burst into a few embers before fizzling out, giving Samus a new idea. Its blood was flammable! She pushed the fingers of her right hand together and retracted her thumb to ready the arm cannon's plasma beam. She took aim at the wound and fired.

A regular beam shot came out. It briefly staggered her target, but the creature got back to hobbling toward her right away. She looked at her cannon in confusion. Why didn't the plasma beam activate? As she slipped past another stab of her foe's talons, she displayed her suit's status in the corner of her visor.

Her plasma beam was offline.

 _All of her weapons were offline._

* * *

"Dr. Bergman," said Adam.

Out of the corner of her eye, Madeline could see the purple light flickering and illuminating her corner of the ship. She was in the middle of tinkering with the thruster's magnetic circuit, kneeling beside the gearbox on the floor and accepting a wrench that one of the etecoons carried over to her. She hadn't worked with this kind of machinery since her time in the academy, and her hands shaking from lack of sleep made things harder, but the alternative was sleeping while Samus and Anthony went off to who-knows-where.

Adam continued without a response, speaking over the sounds of small metal parts clanging together. "Samus told me who you are on the way to the space colony, but I don't think you ever introduced yourself."

She looked at him and smiled weakly. "Hello, then. I'm Madeline. Madeline Bergman."

"And I'm Adam. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Madeline set down the wrench. "Nice to meet you, too." Her hand drifted to the side and idly petted the baby dachora huddled nearby, its feathers soft and warm from the still-cooling box. It nipped her hand a little with its sharp beak, but settled down once she started rubbing gently under its head.

"How do you know Samus and Anthony?"

Madeline's hands stilled. "They helped me."

"Did you meet on one of their missions?"

"That's right." Her body tensed even more. "They came to the Bottle Ship because of my distress call." She forced herself back to work, pushing memories of the worst few days of her life out of her head with every turn of the bolts. Not that it made much of a difference since the fuel injectors inside the ship looked normal. "There's nothing wrong with this cathode that I can see. You should check the main accelerators outside instead." Maybe that would take Adam's mind off those questions.

"The Bottle Ship. That was the location of my counterpart's final mission. Do you know what happened to him?"

Or maybe not. "He…" Then Madeline realized something. She may have referenced his reports constantly in her own work, but she never spoke to the flesh-and-blood Adam. She wouldn't even have an answer now if she hadn't been there when Samus reported in to the Supreme Council after that nightmare. "He died destroying an unstoppable bioweapon. I wasn't there personally. Samus told me."

"And if the information I've gathered about the incident is true… you were the primary director of that project, and therefore that bioweapon's creator, right?"

She slammed the box's lid shut and whirled around to face him with a glare. " _Don't remind me!_ "

The etecoons and dachoras hid from the outburst, making the ship fall back into an uneasy quiet.

Something inside Madeline had snapped, leaving emotional shrapnel behind that weighed on her chest. "I'm… I'm…" Her body shuddered and messy tears pooled below her eyes. "I'm so sorry for yelling. But everything that happened there is my responsibility, including what happened to you, or who you used to be, or… or…" She wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve and breathed in sharply to clear her plugged-up nose. "You don't have to forgive me. I don't expect you to."

Adam didn't respond right away. Was he surprised? Offended that she just made his death all about her guilt? She could only guess what thoughts were running underneath that dashboard. "If it makes any difference," he said, his synthetic speech noticeably slower, "that means I owe my existence to you."

Madeline's face reddened as she looked down at the floor.

Then a low-pitched beeping noise came from the dashboard, ceasing at the sound of Adam's voice. "Hello, Anthony. Have you found something?"

"Sure have, Commander! There's a huge computer terminal here! Just downloaded something from it, but looks like it's encrypted. It could take a while to learn anything from this thing," said Anthony, his voice muffled and distorted with static from the onboard speaker.

Madeline pushed herself onto her feet and hurried to the dashboard, stumbling a few feet short of it and planting her damp hands on the central console to stabilize herself. "But that's fantastic!" Her voice cracked a little, still shaken from what just happened.

"Send it to us and we'll handle it," said Adam. After a loading screen played on the console's screen for a few seconds, a file with a random string of characters for a filename popped up. "Without a decryption key, our only chance is if I can generate and try possibilities until something works."

"Brute force, then. Could have it in minutes or days, then, or longer," Madeline murmured to herself. She wondered how taxing it would be on the onboard computer and the brain emulator contained within. Hopefully it wouldn't force him offline, since she was running low on companionship as it was.

Adam minimized the window. "We've received your file, Anthony. Have you found anything else?"

There was no response.

"Anthony? Come in, Anthony. Are you still there?"

* * *

Samus bounded out of the way of the monstrosity's counterattack, charging a massive energy blast and firing at its exposed flesh before hitting the ground again. Whatever this thing was, she was going to have to take it down without any augmentations to her power beam.

She checked her system status. Normal missiles and the default charge beam still responded as normal. She could work with that.

The beast kept itself moving and jumped side to side as it approached Samus for another jab at her armor. It anticipated Samus's attempt to step out of the way and reached out to strike her right in the chest.

Samus clutched the aching spot where the hit made contact with one hand and fired a charge shot at the creature's face. It reflected off the monster's eyes and bounced away when it hit the glass doors. Maybe a few concussive blasts from her missiles would be enough to subdue the creature, but it probably wouldn't stay still enough for a series of good shots. That is, unless she forced it to.

She jumped out of the way of another slash and went over to the wall with glass cases, with only a few inches between her and the glass and table on either side. As she increased the distance between herself and the creature, she drew one of the cases' doors open with her foot. _Come on,_ she thought, bracing herself.

As she expected, the beast approached her by cutting between the operating table and the cases. She fired a missile at its side, failing to do much damage but knocking it off balance and into the case.

That was her chance. She threw all of her weight against the door and slammed it shut on the creature's torso, prompting a piercing shriek of pain and trapping it against the wall. She jumped on top of the immobile beast, pinned it down, and unloaded her supply of ammo straight into the exposed underside of the creature's shell left by its earlier wound. The barrage of missile blasts etched cracks into the monster's exoskeleton that spread from the points of impact. Samus felt its movements slow under her foot. Within seconds, the creature stopped completely.

She generated another missile and fired it into the monster's now-exposed head to be sure. Now, the purple blood dripping down the shelves into a pool below the case, the dark clouds of smoke wafting from the missiles' impact points, and the rise and fall of Samus's breath were the only movement left in the room.

No time to rest. She opened her communication line to the ship and Anthony's suit. "Anthony, Adam, I found an empty laboratory over a hundred meters from where I entered," she said in between heavy breaths that heated up the inside of her helmet. "Something attacked me there, something I've never seen before and my scanner couldn't identify. I think this facility may have been abandoned with its research subjects still inside. What have your findings been?"

Dead air.

"Adam? Anthony? Why aren't you responding? Madeline?"

 _Something happened to them. Like it always does._ Her pupils shrank. She sprinted at full speed down the hall, trying and failing to activate her suit's speed booster but going back to running without missing a step. A missile from her cannon burst the door to the hangar right open, and she hurried to the ship. She opened the hatch to see Madeline at the main console talking to Adam.

Madeline jolted upright in surprise. "Oh, Samus! We've been trying to contact you–"

"Where's Anthony?"

Adam chimed in. "We haven't been able to contact him, either. He sent us this file, but we can't bypass its–"

Samus ducked back out of the ship and walked away with heavy, firm footsteps.

"W-wait, where are you going?" Madeline peeked out from the ship's hatch.

"Where he went when we split up," said Samus, "that's my best chance to find him."

Madeline slid out of the bottom of the ship and followed behind her. "You…" Her words caught in her throat like a painful lump and she shrank back reflexively. Was she really trying to tell _the Hunter_ what to do? "…These restraints on our equipment are in flux, blocking features as we use them, so the source… Something must know we're here! You could be in greater danger now!" She grabbed onto Samus's forearm.

Samus gasped and pulled her arm away. "I can't rest while he's still out there." She passed over the threshold to the corridor where Anthony had gone, looking back at Madeline as the door closed between them.

"I'm sorry."


End file.
